Dear Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai,
In the past few years, you have pioneered important transparency tools to help your platform users understand, learn about and contextualise the political advertising they see. We agree that advertiser verification processes and ad repositories are key safeguards against online manipulation and misinformation. However, we are saddened to observe that these benefits have not been equally distributed among your global user base.
Each platform operates fluctuating and often widely differing transparency standards for different countries. While some users benefit from seeing political advertising in an ad repository, others do not. Where some users are offered detailed information about a political ad, others are not. There are no legitimate or otherwise publicly disclosed reasons justifying this difference in treatment.
Confronting the scourge of persecution by prosecution
January 17, 2021 in Opinion
BY NIGEL NYAMUTUMBU
One of the most topical debates in national discourses in Zimbabwe over the last week has been around mechanisms to address and regulate the dissemination of false information and disinformation, in light of the arrests of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and opposition political officials Job Sikhala and Fadzayi Mahere.
The trio’s alleged crime was that of publishing a falsehood or communicating false information prejudicial to the state.
This purported offence is drawn from Section 31 (a) (iii) of the Criminal (Codification and Reform) Act, a part of the law which in all intents and purpose doesn’t only no longer exists in our statutes by virtue of a Constitutional Court ruling, but is also not in sync with the government’s law reform agenda that has, among other developments, repealed repressive legislation such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy